Axxis - Coming Home (Phonotraxx Publishing)
Coming Home is the final chapter of German power metal surviors, Axxis' long history. Releasing their debut album Kingdom Of The Night in 1989, they have had their fair share of ups and downs as a band, but never got away from their core following. Many of their albums have reached critical acclaim and they have played all over Europe for many years releasing a total of 16 studio albums. But this all ends with Coming Home, band founder Bernhard Weiss is still the driving force alongside keyboard player Harry Oellers who joined the band in 1990.
With them are Matthias Degener (guitar), Rob Schomaker (bass) and Dirk Brand (drums) and inside their own Phonotraxx studio they created an album that attempted to sum up 35 years as a band. To accompany it they will play a tour at the end of the year with two anniversary shows before calling it a day. So what is Coming Home like? Well it's got a modern sheen but musically they go back to their early days with some Germanic hard rock/metal, choosing to make three versions of the album, original, mixed and compact versions.
I'm sticking to the original here and there's a lot of what Axxis such a revered band on offer, from the waves of keys and baroque stabs to that vocal which is just as good now as it was then, but is honed and aged well. That's a metaphor for the whole band really as if you didn't know it was the end you'd think that they could go another 30 years! 8/10
Black Capricorn - Sacrifice Darkness And ... Fire (Majestic Mountain Records)
Italian fuzz, psych doomsters Black Capricorn return with their newest album Sacrifice Darkness And ... Fire. Again they heavily worship Sabbath alongside the proto metal of Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, while the likes of contemporaries Reverend Bizarre and Lord Vicar are also major influences, the latter given tribute on A New Day Rising.
Again released through Majestic Mountain Records, this is their second album on that label and their seventh overall, they don't change what they do too much from the previous six efforts as Rachela (drums) and Virginia (bass) Piras create the sludgy, fuzzy grooves, the expressive drums and ear drum battering bass has a blues root to it but turns up the volume and the distortion to make it some hammering proto-doom.
With this crushing foundation everything else is the role of Fabrizio Monni, the reverbed vocals, the psychedelic, effects drenched guitars, the claustrophobic production, the engineering and even the artwork. The trio sync together well as you'd expect for a band who have played seven albums together. Sacrifice Darkness And ... Fire is another sonorous slab of psychedelic doom from this Italian trio. 8/10
Legions Of The Night - Darkness (Pride & Joy Music)
It's surprising that we haven't covered Legions Of The Night here before, seeing as I do love most of the projects that Henning Basse is involved with. To rectify that let's get into their third album Darkness, rapidly following their 2020 debut and Hell in 2022, Darkness is an album of melodic power metal that has a melancholic edge to it, there's some darkly romantic ballads, tough riffs, blast beats and the diverse vocals of Basse.
Drawing influence from Ashes Of Ares, Orden Ogan and Savatage, it even features a cover of Tonight He Grins Again, Darkness is quite theatrical, continuing the style they established on the two previous records. With Henning Basse (ex-Metallium/ex-Firewind) on vocals the rest of the band are guitarist Jens Faber and drummer Philipp Bock, both from German power/death metal band Dawn Of Destiny.
There's a lot of similarities to Dawn Of Destiny here with the blast beat drumming on Hate and Another Devil, the more aggressive side of the band while Let The River Flow and Better Man are the slower more thoughtful side. There's symphonics on One Moment, a heavy chug on I Don't See The Light frequent use of acoustic beginnings and interludes on tracks such as Leave Me and pianos on the title track, all of this extra instrumentation, the orchestrations etc remind you of Savatage so it's only right the album ends with their cover.
A band on the heavier side of melodic metal, Legions Of The Night, puts two great players with one great singer for another set of muscular anthemic heavy metal. 7/10
Eternal Remembrance - Tales Of A Dying World (Self Released)
Founded in 2022 Eternal Remembrance crowdfunded their debut full length album Tales Of A Dying World through Kickstarter (remember that?). It's quite an eclectic album but stays mainly in the melodic death metal realms, though there is a huge amount of orchestrations, synths and atmospheres. They've been compared to Amon Amarth, Equilibrium, I'd say you could add Wintersun and even Enslaved to that as well. Folk sounds come through on both the gothic Slaves Of Fear and Gūđ-Cyning which is the first track that shows off the clean vocals from Ragnar Hårfagre, but his guttural growls and black metal roars are both incredibly impressive, often layered over one another to create an extreme vocal harmony.
These strings and orchestral flourishes come from Stefan Kechter's keyboards and do a lot to raise the musical nuances of Tales Of A Dying World, an album with a lot of different genre styles throughout. Take Denied and Black Shield, the first is a modern breakdown infused death metal track based around Leon Ellenberger's thick basslines and Nick Meyer's impeccable drumming while the second starts as melodic almost ballad before exploding into progressive black metal before Moonlight allows the record to transcend into piano based balladry, again with clean vocals. Then things go totally wild with Pirates, as this turns into a pirate metal album.
The switching between genres may put off some but it's a really showcase of the whole bands talent, especially guitarist Sebastian Stell who can turn his hand to nearly any style with virtuosity. For me the last two songs let the album down a little but Eternal Remembrance showcase their skills with this debut. 7/10
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